HEROD, JOHi^ Am JESUS ; 



OR 



AMERICAN SLAYERY 



AND ITS 



CHRISTIAN CmiE. 



A SEMOX PPtEACHED IX DIYISIOX STEEET CnURCH, 



fV-\ 



By rev. at D. mayo. 



ALBANY : 

WEED, PARSONS & COMPANY, PRINTERS. 
18C0. 



^ S E B M O N . 



Text — Mark vi, 14, 15, 16. 

" And King Herod heard of Jesus (for his name -was spread abroad), and 
be said, That John the Baptist Avas risen from the dead, and therefore mighty 
•works do show forth themselves in him. Others said, That it is Elias And 
others said, That it is aprophet, or as one of the prophets. But when Ilerod 
heard thereof, he said. It is John, whom I beheaded : he is risen from the 
dead." 

Eighteen hundred years ago, there appeared in the corrupt 
nation of Judea, a stern and terrible Prophet. John the Bap- 
tist appeared, crying '' Repent ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven 
is at hand." He came preaching in the wilderness, clothed 
with camel's hair and a girdle of skin about his loins, and he 
ate locusts and wild honey. The people of the proudest city 
and country on earth flocked to hear him. He preached a gospel 
of terror and destruction to the wicked. '-Now," he said, " the 
axe is laid unto the root of the trees : therefore every tree 
which bringeth not forth good fruit, is hewn down and cast 
into the fire." He said to his hearers : " Oh, generation of 
vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to 
come ?" For now, he said, had appeared the awful day of 
reckoning. The high places should be brought low, and the 
low places be exalted. One was coming, mightier than 
he, who would baptize with the Holy Ghost and fire ; who 
would purge the earth and burn the chaff with unquench- 
able flames. He appeared to Herod the Tetrarch, who had 



4 AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 

Stolen his brothel's wife ; and assailed his domestic institu- 
tions, saying: "It is not lawful for thee to have her!" 
There were but two things for Herod to do j repent, or kill 
the Prophet. He chose the latter, and beheaded John in 
prison. 

Bat nowappcared another Prophet in Judea. Jesus came, 
sajing : " Repent," but in a sense vaster than John the Baptist! 
He preached a gospel so much higher than the stern old 
martyr, that though John was the greatest prophet of the 
order that was passing away, the least in the new Kingdom of 
Heaven was greater than he. Jesus knew and valued John ; 
but he preached a higher form of religion. The Hebrew' 
Prophet had only wrath for the godless; the Christ had love 
for all. To the one, sinners were vipers to be exterminated ; 
to the other, wicked men were brothers to be regenerated. 
John would fly upon the tyrant Herod and overthrow him. 
Jesus would proclaim a gospel that would change every 
tyrant to a lover of his lowest serf. John's idea of the 
Kingdom of Heaven was an immediate, decisive battle 
between evil and good men, which should burn up the chaff. 
Jesus believed in burning out sin by converting every sinner 
to a saint. John's system of reformation was revolution • 
war to the end. He was out of patience with the tyrant! 
He lost liiith in Jesus because he thought him not decisive, 
and did not upset Herod in a day, and sent his disciples to 
him saying : " Art thou he who should come or look we for 
another ?" Jesus would plant seeds of immortal truth and 
love in the soul and society, whose growth would displace the 
vile growths of evil. John had no policy, despised the name, 
but drove at the enemies of the Lord with the short sword 
of wrath. Jesus was the fuuider of a policy of reformation 
that needed ages for its majestic unfolding; that is even now 
slowly regenerating the earth. John hated the sinner as he 
supposed God and God's Messiah must. Jesus loved all 
spirits; died for all and so proved himself the Christ of 
God. 



AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 5 

But how could Herod, the tyrant, steeped in blood and 
lust and falsehood, understand Jesus? He understood 
John ; that he intended to put him out of the way as a 
monster, and killed him at once. But when the Christ of 
God's love appeared; the Christ that did not wish to harm 
one hair of the tyrant's head, only to cleanse him of his sins, 
and give him eternal joy and peace as a regenerate creature' 
Herod knew him not. To the gloomy despot the message of 
Jesus was only the old message of John. « Who is this of 
whom I hear such things ?" says he, " John have I beheaded ;" 
and then the fiends of remorse shrieked through the resound- 
ing chambers of his soul : " It is John whom I beheaded. 
He is risen from the deadV Oh, could Herod have known 
who Jesus was, what he wished to do for him, how the love 
of the Christ was seeking him and would make him a happy 
and holy man ! But that was just what Herod could nVt 
see. He was too far gone to distinguish the messenger of 
wrath from the messenger of love. He saw only the'^ghost 
of John whom he had beheaded ; he heard only the swift 
steps of the avenger; he felt only the steel of the assassin. 
Visions of his burning towns, revolting subjects, enemies 
thirsting for his blood, mingled with his dream of pomp and 
power. He treated Jesus as the risen John, and plotted for, 
and finally helped to accomplish his death. 

All this is with us to-day. Herod lives in this republic, 
in that Slave Power which claims possession of this New 
World, as it has dominion over the Old. He is the implacable 
foe of all goodness not of the despotic type; and will trample 
out all civilization that cannot be subdued to his own relent- 
less pattern. The old prophet is here ; John Brown beheaded 
for doing what Moses and Joshua and David did; what 
Isaiah and Jeremiah and John the Baptist preached. The 
Slave Power has just killed the best specimen of the old 
Hebrew fighting Prophet that ever was born on American 
soil. Our John saw our Herod, and knew him for God's foe, 
and flung his sword in his flice; and Herod was able to do 
1* 



b AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 

nothing better than make a great state holiday and take his 
life. 

Jesus is also here 3 not altogether in any man, in any 
church, in any state of this Unionj but in that spirit of 
regeneration which cries aloud through all our borders: 
"Repent!" Christ in America is that wondrous spirit of 
love and liberty, which rebukes men everywhere for every 
wicked thing they do ; which is toiling to save every sinner ; 
which curses no man, but has a blessing alike for Virginia, 
red with the Prophet's blood, and the Prophet himself red 
with the blood of those he counted the enemies of God; 
which says to the Slave Power : " Depart ye, accursed, into 
everlasting fire, prepared for the Devil and his angels ;" but 
to the slaveholder and the slave: " Come to me, and I will 
save you both from this demoniacal oppression ; reconcile you 
to each other ; teach you bondman to forgive your persecutor, 
and you tyrant to emancipate your victim." Christ, the 
regenerating love and freedom of God is here, slowly chang- 
ing cverj^ American Institution, and converting our half bar- 
barian society to the true civilization, where all men are 
equal in right to become what God has made them capable of 
becoming. 

As I have looked over the events of the last few months, I 
have seen again this old drama of Herod, John and Jesus. 
I have seen irresponsible despotism trampling down Human- 
ity, rising up from its daily feast of blood and falsehood, and 
lust, to hold a carnival against the fierce prophet that would 
slay it in its sins ; shuddering at every leaf that stirred through 
the land ; evermore crying out in its sleep : " It is John," and 
raging against the wisest and best of the country, like a 
demon. And I have seen Jesus calmly submitting to be called 
a devil, bearing his cross of patient crucifixion, but none the 
lest irresistibly saving us all. Let us take this old Bible story 
and learn how good it is for to-day. Let us understand, 1st. 
What Herod is doing and proposes to do in Ainerica ; 2d. 
What John is doin^ and will yet do; 3d. What Jesus the 



AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. / 

Christ is doing and will do till this Republic becomes the 
Kingdom of God. 

First : What is Herod doing, and what does he propose to 
do in America? 

Herod is the type of irresponsible despotism. Every na- 
tion is sooner or later threatened by the tyranny that con- 
sists in the subjugation and use of the weak by the strong 
for their own pleasure. A majority of the governments of 
the world have been and still are only the few oppressing the 
many, under forms of society invented to perpetuate the ori- 
ginal wrong. Our republic, like every previous republic, is 
menaced by this foe to human nature — irresponsible despot- 
ism. Though partially seen in all directions, this tyranny 
culminates in the Slave Power of this Union, and with that 
institution as a lever seeks to upset the whole fabric of our 
national freedom. 

Our American Herod is the enslavement of four million 
colored laboring men and women by three hundred and fifty 
thousand white men and women. This white aristocracy has 
reduced the slave race to the condition of property by the 
annihilation of almost every natural right that separates hu- 
manity from the brutes. The slave has no legal property, no 
lawful marriage, no independent possession of himself. He is 
said to belong to the master whose property he is ; and as the 
laws by which he is seemingly protected are made by the 
master, the power is virtually irresponsible. This aristocracy 
of three hundred and fifty thousand slave owners thus holds 
a vast population in complete slavery. It has possession 
through its wealth, concentration and hereditary prestige of 
the whole social system in the slave states. Through politi- 
cal privileges, by itself forced into the national Constitution, 
and by its unity of interest, it has hitherto managed to hold 
and administer the government of the United States, and 
greatly to embarrass the development of free society in the 
whole country. 

American Slavery is a military despotism perpetuating itself 
through the forms of law. Every enormity and crime that 



8 



AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 



belongs to irresponsible tyranny, is exhibited in its past his- 
tory and present state. It began in the invasion of an nn- 
offendnig people, and their subjugation by sword, fire and 
chanis; a war of invasion, compared with which John 
13rown s foray was an Indian-summer day's pastime From 
the hour when the first shipload of negroes was bought 
111 Virgm.a, it has been a relentless armed possession of the 
conquered race. It began in the Old Dominion with a code 
of slave laws so barbarous that they were a scandal to 
human nature, fit precursor of Modern Virginia Justice. 
Old Gov. Berkley, raged against the printing press and free 
speech m that colony, very much as the dignitaries of that 
state now rave against " incendiary publications." The Slave 
Power entrenched itself in its present citadel before the or- 
ganization of the government. It forced itself into the Con- 
stitution of the United States by the same kind of threats 
with which it now holds the nation under its intolerant rule 
Driven from seven states of the North, it seized nine others 
far more extensive, fertile and better situated for its pur- 
poses. It resisted the repeal of the slave trade as lon<^ as it 
could, and then continued it in defiance of law, and ha°s now 
practically re-established it. It wrenched Missouri from 
Ireedom in 1820, by threats that were as treasonable as 
John Brown's carpet bag constitution. It drove the country 
into war with a neighboring power; conquered Texas, New 
Mexico and Utah, a territory fifteen times the size of New 
York and doomed it all to Slavery; and threatened to 
dissolve the Union, because it could not thus curse Califor- 
nia, another vast province, three times as large as New York- 
on the Pacific. It broke the most solemn compact ever made 
between the North and the South, to subdue Kansas-another 
empire three times the size of our state, to itself. It invaded 
Kansas with the sword, and it did not hide its constitution 
in a carpet bag ; but took it out and put it on the people • 
and by the help of arms, stolen from a United States arsenal' 
fastened a slave government upon that territory, under which 



AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. U 

she yet groans. It slew more than a hundred men in that 
territory, and wasted tens of thousands of property. It has 
now proclaimed, by its courts, that more than 1,000,000 
square miles, including all the territory of the United Stales, 
is slave territory ; and is about to assert its right, by the same 
court, of carrying slaves through every free state. It has 
practically re-established the slave trade, and by the connivance 
of the government, sends out its armed hordes to threaten 
neighboring states with whom we are at peace. It is openly 
proposing to subvert the constitution of our country, and 
change the United States from a republic to an oligarchy, in 
which the Slave Power shall rule by force and fraud, as surely 
as any aristocracy ever governed a subjugated people. 

From the beginning, American Slavery has been practically 
the rule of the sword. It governs its slaves by a police and 
code, the most barbarous that exists in the civilized earth. 
It suppresses every class that can disturb its possession ; 
either by social oppression, as the poor white, or by banish- 
ment and plunder, as the free black. It denies the constitu- 
tional right of protection to any citizen of the United States, 
supposed to be dangerous to itself; and by the mob, the duel, 
the recreant court, defies all attempt to maintain the privi- 
leges of American freemen on slave soil. It claims the right 
to rob the United States mail, and insults the government at 
every turn. Through the hands of its parasites, it has sla'n 
scores of men on free soil, for no other crime than liberty. 
From the day when it shot Lovejoy, in Illinois, for the crime 
of free printing, to the present hour, its whole career has 
been one of unbridled insolence. It has half killed one 
Senator on the floor of Congress, and has just shot another 
in California ; and has threatened every eminent statesman 
and philanthropist of the United States with death. '\Yho 
shall draw up this dreadful record of blood, and show the 
names of its victims, murdered under the lash, burned at 
the stake, hunted with dogs and guns ; women violated, men 
shot and scourged ? The history of these enormities, within 



10 



AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CPIRISTIAN CURE. 



the last fifty years, would appall the civilized world, could it 
be gathered in one book. And now it has crowned its infamy 
by hanging a man on the charge of treason and murder, each 
of which it has committed over and over ao-ain. 

And this is the bloody despotism, that now howls through 
the land, against the noblest and purest men and womenin 
America ; calling them "Traitors," "i\gitators,'' "Infidels;" 
setting up its pettifogging lawyers to accuse them of treason 
and its base journalists to offer a price for their life, and its 
clergy to read them out of the church ; plotting to get emi- 
nent northern men before its courts, to be slain by a jury or 
without a jury ; accusing us of sedition, and arming itself, not 
to resist us who never invaded it, but to subdue us 'into 
compliance with its demands. Treason ! Why, the Slave 
Power, for the last forty years, has been organized treason 
against the existence of a republican government. Agitation ! 
Why, the country has rocked to and fro, from the first day 
of its existence, with the struggles of this despotism for 
dominion. Murder ! Summon the ghosts of the victims of 
Slavery, and let them tell the tale ! Violence ! Who has 
filled the land with mobs against free speech and liberty ? 
Who, in 1856, forbade the people of fifteen states from voting 
for one presidential candidate, on peril of death? What 
power is now threatening on the floor of Congress to dissolve 
the Union, if a President of a hostile party is elected 7 

Is it strange, in view of these crimes, that the Slave Power 
thus boldly accuses freedom of all mischievous and base 
things? It is the old trick of despotism. Just as Francis 
Joseph and Pope Pius stigmatize the freemen of Europe as 
« Heretics," " Traitors," " Enemies of God and social order," 
so does our oligarchy maintain its rank among the world's 
oppressors, by persistent calumniation of all the friends of 
liberty. The Slave Power is the great liar of the western 
contment. It perverts history, poisons character, breaks 
faith, plots and undermines, bribes and circumvents here 
just as every tyrant does abroad-just as despotism always 



AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 11 

has done since Cain killed his brother, and lied to God about 
the evil deed. Thus while itself "the sum of all villainies," 
the Slave Power lives by charging all the crimes of the deca- 
logue on the freemen of the land. 

Do not think I am unjust to our brethren of the slave re- 
gions of this country. The Slave Power is not the South. 
It is a great landed aristocracy of 350,000 people, located at 
the South ; owning one-third the real estate of that region, 
213,000,000 acres, and wielding a capital, in land and slaves, 
of two and a half billions of dollars. This southern aris- 
tocracy is in alliance with a corrupt commercial class in the 
great cities of the Northern States and the British Empire. 
New York, Liverpool and Manchester are as much the seat of 
the Slave Power as the cotton fields of South Carolina; Cin- 
cinnati and Philadelphia as surely as the rice swamps of 
Georgia and the sugar estates of Louisiana. The Slave 
Power always assumes to speak for the south ; just as despot- 
ism always overlooks the people. But there are 331,000,000 
acres of land, and seven millions of white people, in the 
Slave States, that are not of the Slave Power, though now 
held in subjection by it. This oligarchy, a smaller number 
of people than now inhabit the city of New York, rules this 
Republic ; just as a few thousand kings, generals and noble- 
men oppress the great empires of Europe. The Slave Power 
is the despotic tendency of the country concentrating about 
and buttressing the slaveholders. Thus, every man, in Church 
and State, who wants to play the tyrant, finds himself in 
natural affinity with it. The south is full of noble men and 
women who groan under its yoke. 

We may wonder why men, who are often amiable and re- 
spected in private life, should lend themselves to such enor- 
mities as are daily committed by the Slave Power; but it is 
the law of human affairs, that every despotism finally assails 
not a class, but human nature. There is a dreadful logic in 
tyranny that drives its supporters from point to point to the 
last result of crime and blasphemy. The Slave Power set out 



12 AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 

with denying human rights to the negro; but it has found 
that the negro, being a man, is tied to every other race and 
every sacred interest. To keep him down it must keep every- 
body else down, and crush freedom everywhere. Herod 
began with the desire to play the king; he was driven from 
crime to crime, till he stole his brother's wife, beheaded John 
and helped to crucify Jesus. "When the Slave Power declares 
a negro no man, it declares you and me no better than a 
negro if we stand in its w^j. It would kill a Senator of 
Massachusetts, a President of the United States, as quick as 
a runaway slave, if either really blocked its path. It would 
forbid the white children of Ohio to read as soon as the negro 
children in Mississippi, if this were necessary to secure its 
power. It would proclaim martial law in New York and fill 
the cars of the Central Railroad with soldiers as soon as in 
Virginia, if New York threatened to abolish it. Though 
good men are often found in a dominant aristocracy, 
despotism never yet stopped at any enormity. It swal- 
lowed the massacres of Rome, the horrors of a St. Bartholo- 
mew's day, the slaughters and confiscations of Napoleon. 
It is capable, in America, of all it ever has been, or now 
is capable elsewhere. It is as determined to put out Liberty 
here as in Austria. Despotism and Freedom are foes from 
eternity, and to all eternities to come. One must die : 
the only question in America is — which shall subside, the 
Slave Power or Freedom ? The " irrepressible conflict," of 
which so much is now said, is not a conflict between the peo- 
ple of the different sections of this republic, but a duel be- 
tween the two opposing forces in the republic, from which 
only one will come out alive. I have no doubt which party 
will be left on the field. I believe the Slave Power is to be 
broken down within half a century, and Freedom become the 
law in America. 

How shall that be done ? Shall John or Jesus abolish 
Herod ? How does each propose to destroy him ? 

Second : "What does John propose to do with Herod ? 



AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 13 

John tbe Baptist is the tj'pe of that old Hebrew Religion 
that would regenerate the world by cutting of and destroying 
the wicked men in it. It believes in a God of implacable 
justice, who '' lays the axe at the root of the trees and hews 
down and casts into the fire every tree that beareth not fruit." 
It identifies the sin and the sinner. It looks at a great wick- 
ed institution, and summons it in the name of God to subside. 
If it- does not subside it draws the sword and in the name of 
God rushes to destroy all who uphold it, from the face of the 
earth. That old Hebrew way of disposing of sin has its re- 
presentative to-day in America. John Brown was its perfect 
incarnation. John Brown feared God and hated evil as 
fiercely as any hero of that old day. He was brave, just and 
humane to the full extent of his principle ; indeed there was 
in him somewhat of tenderness caught from a higher faith 
than his own. But just as firm and true and pure as he was 
in his personal character, just so terribly did he Late Slavery, 
the sum of all villainies. He saw it was the worst sin on the 
continent ; the end of wrong to man and blasphemy against 
God ; and his soul burned like a slow fire a quarter of a cen- 
tury to exterminate it at one blow. He waited with won- 
derful patience and prudence till the Slave Power drew the 
sword against freedom in Kansas. Then he flew to the fight 
hoping the hour had come. Ilis counsel was rejected ; but 
he still fought on his own responsibilit}^, and having once un- 
sheatlied his steel, threw away the scabbard. He finally be- 
lieved the day had appeared. With a lack of his usual prudence 
he trusted the representations of his associates, that the bond- 
men were ready for revolt. In full confidence in that he seized 
the chief strategical point of the oldest slave state, and flung 
defiance in the face of despotism in the citadel of her 
power. 

He was deceived and overpowered, and has died as he lived ; 

taking nothing back ; warring with the tongue and pen when 

his rifle was wrenched away. He looked the despotism of the 

new world full in the eye with a glance of defiance that burned 

2 



14 AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 

to tlie soul of the Old Dominion. He repelled the religion 
of his enemy, saying : " I Avould rather a dozen slave chil- 
dren and a good old slave mother would ask God's blessing on 
me, than all the clergy in Virginia." He mounted his scaffold 
with the step of a monarch ascending his throne, and bid 
good-bye to his executioners as cheerfully as if he were going 
to a feast. What shall we call him but the best incarnation 
of the old Hebrew gospel of God's wrath against sinners that 
ever trod the soil of this new world. Just as Joshua swept 
the heathen to destruction ; just as Isaiah stormed hail stones 
and fire against the wicked ; just as Cromwell bent a King's 
neck under the axe ; just as the Puritan slew the Pagan sav- 
ages ; just as Havelock sent the Sepoys to Hell to the music 
of prayers and sacred songs ; — did this man — not in a spirit 
of revenge, but in the spirit of the old gospel of destruction — 
stamp his foot at Harper's Ferry and send Virginia into an 
ague that all the political and ecclesiastical quinine of her 
despotic governors and slave-driving priests cannot lay to 
rest. 

There was a great truth in this way of dealing with sin in 
the days of Moses and David. The Hebrews were one little 
people which represented the true God in the world, and all 
the rest a wilderness of heathendom. The only question in 
Judea was, which party should survive. Joshua said, " chooj-e 
this day whom you will serve," and sent the heathen to 
Hades. There has always been a great truth in this mode of 
purification where Christianity has not prevailed. It is the 
only method where there is no power of Christian sentiment 
and institutions to work with. For the worst thing than can 
happen to any nation is to be altogether enslaved; nothing is 
60 bad as that. The next better thing is to destroy that des- 
potism by killing the despots; that is the Hebrew way; 
" God, the consuming fire." The best way is to destroy des- 
potism by converting the despot to freedom and saving the 
oppressor and the oppressed together, as Russia is now eman- 
cipating her slaves. That is Christ's way. Jesus said to 



AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 15 

Peter when he drew his sword to defend him, "Put up thy 
sword ;" not because Jesus was a coward, but because his 
word was a sword so much sharper than Peter's, that it 
would separate the wicked from their sin, and save the world 
from Satan. John Brown's way was infinitely better than to 
submit forever to perfect subjugation by the Slave Power. 
But as Jesus said, " The least in the Kingdom of Heaven is 
greater than John the Baptist," the greatest prophet of the 
old faith; so we must say, even while our souls are thrilling 
with this old hero's sublime fanaticism : " There is a better 
way than yours, John, and we trust the day is past when 
your sword can save us." 

For, if as certain fiery reformers and thundering preachers 
say, John Brown is the true leader of this crisis ; then we 
are all bound to avenge his death, and wash out that gallows 
in the blood of the State that reared it. Then the North must 
devote her gigantic wealth, her terrific energy, her indomit- 
able courage, to a might}^ crusade on the South, and slay 
and burn till the slave is free and safe from his oppressor* 
And that is a civil war of eighteen millions of white people 
against eight millions of their white brethren, with four mil- 
lions of black slaves waiting the hour to make it such a ser- 
vile war as never yet was seen. Let such preachers and 
agitators look down into this hell, and tell us if they are pre- 
pared to whet the sword for such a harvest of death. If we 
were a nation of heathens or old Jews, and knew no better 
way, even that would be better than the slavery of 30,000,000 
to 350,000. If we should lose Christianity out of America^ 
so that we all run down into heathen or old Hebrews, that 
would be the only way left for us. But whoever says this 
of America, I declare it a libel on our civilization ; and a 
counsel of madness and folly to preach insurrection and inva- 
sion, as a cure for our national ills. 

I do not doubt that the Slave Power will force its subjects 
into more than one insurrection, before its rod is broken. I 
cannot be sure that this horrible iniquity may not yet go out 



IG AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 

in the blood of our fellow-countrymen. I feel the accumulated 
peril of every year's delay in the settlement of this formidable 
controversy between justice and oppression. But while I 
cannot change the laws of History, and must bow to God's 
most terrible retributions, I must ask myself: " What is my 
duty as a teacher of Christianity in such a crisis as the pre- 
sent ?" Shall I declare that the sword is the only way left 
to us to solve this dreadful problem ? I am not a non- 
resistant, and believe Christianity permits man to defend him- 
self or society to protect itself by force in the last extremity 
of peril to life or liberty. But shall I say that last extremity 
is upon our country, so that insurrection and invasion are the 
onl}'- remedy for our ills ? When I look over this great North 
with its growing conviction against slavery, and behold wbat 
wonders have been wrought among us since my own boyhood, 
I am not prepared to repudiate Christ's Gospel of peaceful 
regeneration, and fall back on the Gospel of armed revolution 
as a cure for anything in this country. Indeed, it seems to 
me a shameful abuse of the vast natural supremacy of the 
North to crush out in blood a state of society that with 
patience and fidelity, can yet be redeemed to liberty. 

I believe also such method of operation would be clumsy 
and impolitic. We want to destroy the Slave Power ; and 
that is equally located in North and South. A vast majority 
of the southern people are not its supporters, but its subjects ; 
and this method would involve millions of uon-slaveholding 
whites in all the horrors of a bloody war, and destroy those 
who are on our side. 

But could we gather the three hundred and fifty thousand 
slaveholders into one army, and guard against ever}- contin- 
gency of harm to the slave or non-slaveholding white, it would 
be wicked beyond expression, under present circumstances, to 
make war upon them. For the slaveholders are men — such 
as we should be under their temptation. If we are better 
than they in this respect it is because God has given us a 
better education in civilization. They arc our brethren and 



AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 17 

sisters. God loves them as truly as the black man. "We 
want lo save them — recall them from their " wild and guilty- 
fantasy," and consecrate the admirable power and ability they 
now devote to despotism, to the establishment of a Christian 
republic. Never, while one hope remains of saving our country 
together to God and humanity by Christian influences, should 
we draw the sword on them. If Satan should so far get the 
upper hand that the only alternative were slavery of the 
whole or the destruction of the despots, there would be less 
doubt what we ought to do. But that day has not come — 
will never come, if we perform our duty as Christian citizens 
of the republic. 

Third : What does Jesus propose to do with Herod 1 
Jesus, the Christ, would destroy sin by regenerating the 
sinner and saving all concerned in it from the power of the 
Devil. He is the source and symbol of those great spiritual 
ideas and forces which, silently or actively, forever shape the 
destinies of mankind. Physical force is the ready weapon of 
man in his sensual and barbarous condition, and every savage 
people seems condemned to hew its way to civilization by the 
sword. Christianity pronounces war, even in the best cause 
and the last resort, a degrading remedy for any wrong, and 
repudiates it while spiritual methods have the most distant 
hope of success. And it always exalts these forces to the 
highest place in her estimation and insists that men shall ex- 
haust every resource of just private and public influence and 
policy before they oppose force to force. Nothing but the 
imperative necessity of self-preservation can excuse society 
from using the military arm in defense or assertion of liberty 
and order ; and Christ would lead every nation to that point 
where an enlightened and religious public sentiment would be 
the only police, and righteous laws be obeyed and evil decrees 
be spurned by an irresistible opinion of the people. Until that 
time, Christ, in every community, is the Spiritual Force of 
truth and love extirpating all error and sin by regenerating 
the ignorant and vile, as opposed to the power of phy^cal 

2* 



18 AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 

force enlisted for the same ends. His best representative in 
America is that true church consisting of all souls who believe 
and live out the " liberty wherewith he has made them free." 
Whoever truly loves God and man is a Christian ; and every 
Christian hates Slavery as he hates hell, and in the spirit o^ 
love to all men devotes his life to its extirpation. 

This spirit of Christian freedom has already done mighty 
things in our nation. It has created eighteen free common- 
wealths, spite of their faults, the noblest new states the world 
ever yet beheld. It is now going on to raise those free states 
up to the standard of Christian public and private morality. 
It has looked at American despotism fastened upon fifteen 
slave states, and long ago pronounced its final doom. And 
now in the slow, sure way in which God works when he 
would lift up a nation to enduring might, it is elaborating its 
policy and beginning its toil. That plan is not now the plat- 
form of any party, but is to become more and more the creed 
of all parties, churches, states and society itself. Let me, 
not as a statesman, which I do not claim to be, not as speaking 
for any sect or party, for I belong to none of them, but as a 
free Christian minister, a free member of the Church Uni- 
versal, a citizen of the United States, set forth this policy, as 
it looks from my pulpit. 

The end proposed by the Christian sentiment of freedom 
is to save the American Union from Slavery, and make it the 
great controlling power of constitutional liberty on the West- 
ern Continent ; the noblest ambition that ever yet fired the 
soul of any community. In that Union a majority of 
states, and an overwhelming majority of wealth, numbers and 
power of every kind is nominally on the side of liberty, 
though now paralyzed by imperfect knowledge and low ideas 
of man ; while the minority, by concentration and fanatical 
belief in despotism, rules the whole country. God has cast our 
lot as citizens of this American Union, and set before us the 
mission of redeeming it from the American form of despot- 
ism. We shall gain nothing by attempting to repudiate our 



AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 19 

social and civil relationship to that confederacy and feigning 
to ignore any of the duties or methods resulting therefrom. 
A Christian in the United States is not a disembodied spirit 
of light, criticising the country ; but a citizen of a government, 
spite of its faults, the best on earth, and a nation nearer 
its deliverance into a true civilization than any people of an- 
cient or modern times. His peculiar duty is to apply the 
Godlike sentiment of love and liberty in every relation of his 
private and public life ; doing all he has the power to accom- 
plish, and striving to leave his posterity on higher ground 
than he now occupies. I speak of this progress of freedom 
as the work of Christianity ; for I have no faith in anything 
but the religious reverence for man as God's immortal 
child, to lift this nation out of its present barbarisms. The 
lower nature of every man is a tyrant ; in America, a slave- 
holder and negro hater ; and all parties or policies emanating 
from that lower region of humanity, will miserably fail to 
elevate the down-trodden races of our land. The progress of 
true religion will mark the growth of an efl'ective Anti- 
Slavery sentiment. This, of course, is a vast and gradual 
enterprise, offering the most illustrious missionary field on 
earth to the faithful soldier of that religion whose founder 
died for the spiritual rights of mankind. In reaching forward 
to this glorious consummation, the Christian sentiment of 
America must proceed somewhat in the path I now imper- 
fectly delineate. 

First. There must be a great education of the masses of the 
people of the north and south, into faith in freedom and the 
true destiny of the republic. Not so much agitation as edu- 
cation ; the dissemination of facts and arguments ; the calm, 
forcible, persistent appeal to the reason and conscience of the 
people, is what we want. Every neighborhood should be 
flooded with documents, showing forth in plain, practical 
terms, the inhumanity, bad policy, folly of Slavery.* An 

* Among the best of such documents, is the " Compendium of the Impend- 
ing Crisis," by Mr. Helper- It is shown to be best, by the fact that the Slave 



20 AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 

army of trained lecturers should perambulate the country, not 
denouncing the southern people, but exposing Slavery at all 
points, and arousing the land in a great revival of sentiment 
and conviction. We have only yet begun this work. The 
people are still grossly ignorant of the real merits of this great 
controversy. Let every man in his place, every journal, every 
orator, spread the truth and arouse the conscience through 
all our borders. 

Then use this awakened sentiment, to weed despotism out 
of northern institutions, and concentrate them all against the 
Slave Power. 

Let the church purify herself of complicity with Slavery ; 
the free Christians in it giving themselves no rest till those 
who are in bonds are converted ; not raging and cutting off in 
wrath, but "speaking the truth in love." Let every religious 
and charitable institution be purged of this virus, and its 
whole policy be directed against Slavery. 

Let our whole system of education be arrayed on the side 
of freedom. If the south sends her sons and daughters to 
our schools, let them learn that knowledge is here regarded 
the handmaid of humanity. Let all magazines, journals, 
books, that pander to the Slave Power, be regenerated or 
remanded to the sole use of their masters. Let it become a 
disgrace for a cultivated man to sneer at Liberty, and our 
northern literature and art be won over to reverence for man. 
Let the theater give us plays on Freedom, and the concerts 
heoric songs of Liberty ; and let music, painting, sculpture, 
architecture and public spectacles be won over to this side. 

Let society be organized in every northern city and village, 
on the basis of human rights ; and every man and woman be 
made to feel that no wealth, or grace, or position can atone 
for infidelity to mankind. 

Power deemed it necessary to spend six weeks in Congress cursing it. It is 
not an "incendiary publication," but an irresistible argument addressed to 
tlie non-slaveholding wliites of the Soutliern States. Could every such per- 
son read and comprehend it, Slavery would bo a doomed institution. 



AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 21 

Let the superiorities of free labor be demonstrated in every 
way, and organized emigration overflow every territory and 
state, peaceably working out the great problem of scientific 
industry against servile toil. Thus, in time can our godless 
commerce be walled in, and shamed into reverence for the 
free institutions she now too often would undermine for 
accursed lust of gold. 

Let every man in the place and profession where God has 
set him, toil to fill his soul and his position with love for true 
Liberty. Thus, slowly but inevitably shall we make every 
northern institution an ally of the true republic ; and society 
itself will become a great wall of granite, against the practical 
encroachments of the slave oligarchy. 

This peaceful and practical reform will make every north- 
ern Christian, every northern institution, a missionary to the 
Slave Power. It will also raise up a noble host in the South 
who will assert the right of free discussion and assail despo- 
tism on its own ground. Thus shall we be prepared for that 
large exercise of Christian statesmanship that will finally 
adjust the forces of the republic. That statesmanship must 
begin in the deliverance of the free states from the power of 
Slavery. Let the Slave Power understand that no further 
aggressions will be submitted to ; no new indignities endured. 
Then let the united party of freedom take possession of the 
general government ; granting to the Slave Power all its consti- 
tutional rights ; but interpreting and administering the Con- 
stitution for Liberty as it now is interpreted and adminis- 
tered for despotism. Let that government take the sword 
out of the hands of the southern and northern destructive 
and wield it only in the sacred interest of Justice and Lib- 
erty. Let tlie infamous Fugitive Slave Law be repealed, and 
the constitutional duty to return fugitives from service to 
their employers be remanded to the several states, each 
commonwealth to decide who does owe service by a jury of 
freemen. Let there be no more slave states. Though every 
hair of the Slave Power stand on end with disunion, let the 



22 AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 

gate be locked against Satan forevermore. Let every inch of 
territory be consecrated to freedom, and whatever new 
empires Providence may commit to our charge be pledged to 
Liberty forever. Let the Supreme Court of the United 
States be remodeled till it represents man and not the auction 
block. Let all fillibustering and slave trading be suppressed 
by the strong arm of the law j and every revolting slave state 
be aftectionately embraced within the restraining arms of a 
determined government. 

Then let the government of the United States say to the 
Slave Power : " We hold the sword of order only to be drawn 
in the sacred interest of freedom. We shall hold it to prevent 
you from carrying off any of the states of the Union into a 
slave empire, for that would doom your slaves and servile 
whites to perpetual bondage. We shall hold it to suppress 
all border ruffianism, fillibustering, mail-robbing, mobocracy, 
slave-trading. We shall hold it to prevent a northern inva- 
sion or slave insurrection ; for civil and servile war are nei- 
ther a Christian nor a statesmanlike cure for our national ills. 
Thus confined within your present bounds, we leave you to 
the inevitable operation of that spirit of Christian progress 
which will compel j^ou to adjust your state of society to the 
advancing civilization of your age. We will respect and pro- 
tect you in the exercise of the right to deal with an evil 
which the present generation inherited from the sin of the 
past. You shall have the time, under a just administration 
of the government, to work out this fearful problem on your 
own ground, by your own best wisdom and religion, aided by 
the sympathy and advice of civilized mankind. If this seems 
to you an oppression, remember that despotism has no na- 
tural rights on earth that any man is bound to respect ; 
and that it is only by God's grace and the forbearance of 
Christian civilization giving you space to repent, and trying 
to save your people altogether, that you endure another hour. 
For America must be free, and Slavery must disappear." 



AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 23 

I know there is no political party, no Christian sect, no 
northern state, as a whole, 3^et fully up to this ; but the 
Christian sentiment of the country will finally bring us all to 
this conclusion ; and ere another twenty-five years, no party, 
church or community in the north, no progressive man in the 
south, will dare to support despotism — but the only rivalry 
will be in fidelity to the rights of human nature. 

But what will Herod be about while Jesus is thus building 
around him a celestial wall of Liberty 1 Of course, Herod in 
America will do what he did in Judea ; for despotism " never 
learns nor forgets anything." When Jesus came, Herod cried 
out : " It is John whom I beheaded ; he is risen from the 
dead." Just so blind is the Slave Power to-day, to the dis- 
tinction between the destructive who would grasp the sword 
of extermination, and the Christian who would save all to 
freedom. One thing the Slave Power is beginning to feel ; 
that it is doomed. It knows it ought to die ; it feels itself an 
enemy to God and man, and the best civilization of the age. 
For the time, it seeks to conceal its mortal terror under a 
show of ruffianism and bombastic defiance of the world, and, 
like Milton's Satan, impiously chooses evil for good, and says : 
*• Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." But, in 
these latter times, it has fallen upon a dismal suspicion, that 
its days are numbered. Its long guilty career of falsehood, 
oppression, murder and blasphemy, has filled its soul with 
strange and awful forebodings ; and in the midst of its insane 
boasts and maddest plans, it inwardly quakes like the aspen 
leaf. It suspects it must die. It can conceive of only one 
way of demise — through blood and wrath from the humanity 
it has so long oppressed. 

It fears the slave — not because the slave is warlike or will 
rise — but because it has so outraged him. It fears the free 
negro — not for his actual hostility — but because it has so 
terribly wronged him, and drives him out from its borders or 
makes him a slave. It fears its own white, laboring men, and 
banishes a Helper or an Underwood — not because they are 



24 AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 

incendiaries — but because it has so trampled on the righls of 
its plebeian white caste. And it fears the North — not because 
the North, or any state, or any large number of men ever did, 
or do now propose invasion or insurrection — but because it 
has insulted and injured the North past endurance. Our own 
calm and patient spirit, has encouraged it to bluster and pre- 
tend that we are cowards ; but it knows, that if the deep, 
cool soul of our eighteen millions were once stirred on the 
farms, and in the shops and homes, and upon the decks of 
this great North, it would wither like the grass before an 
arctic frost. Yet it takes counsel of its fears and ambition, 
and plunges against our cold and passive patience. 

But when John Brown appeared at Harper's Ferry, the 
Slave Power thought its day of doom was come. It saw in 
his stern face the frown of God, and burst into a frenzy 
through its fifteen states ; and now is raving in all the tumult 
of preparation for a great conflict with the sword. It has 
done by him only what it could do. It sees now only that 
one man. It knows no difference between the Christian and 
the Hebrew ; the sword and the baptism of love. It cannot 
see that the Christian freemen of the countrj' do not propose 
to slay one man, to deprive the South of one just right, to do 
one unkind or violent thing, but only to save the people of 
fifteen states from their worst foe, and save the nation from 
ruin. It does see that the Christian sentiment of America 
intends to destroy Slaverj^ j and it knows but one mode of 
its destruction. 

So when the northern mother prays among her children 
for the slave ; and the minister preaches the Gospel of Free- 
dom ; and the child gives the fugitive a loaf of bread and 
cup of water for Christ's dear sake; and the statesman 
unfolds his policy for Liberty and Union ; and the philanthro- 
pist pleads for human nature, the Slave Power shrieks : •' It 
is John whom I beheaded, he isrisen from the dead P^ It 
burst forth into volleys of rage against every man and woman 
who will not be its slave, and gnashes its teeth against them, 



AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 25 

demanding their blood ; driving them from the Southern 
States, arresting them for free speech, threatening everything 
insane and wicked ; hiring renegade editors to call our best 
men traitors, and write obscene things about our noblest 
women ; and generally acting as Macbeth behaved when the 
ghost of Banquo rose at the feast of his guilty power. 

All this is to be expected, and must be patiently endured. 
Let not this torrent of despotic invective be responded to by 
servile Union meetings, that forget Liberty to remember 
merchandise, or by frantic disclaimers of imaginary crimes. 
I am sorry any man has stooped to defend himself against 
the puerile and insane charges of the Slave Power, and the 
Satanic press, during these latter months of its carnival. Let 
there be no more explanations to the Slave Power ; but let 
us all say to the people of the Southern States : " Brethren 
and sisters, let not your tyrant deceive you. This great 
rising spirit of freedom that is resounding through our vast 
areas like the coming up of the north wind over the stormy 
sea, is not John whom you beheaded, rising from the dead. 
We have taken John's body from the bloody hands of the 
Slave Power, and laid it in its grave among the mighty 
Adirondacks, and his spirit is in the hands of God. But hia. 
Gospel is the old Gospel of wrath that is passing away ; our 
Gospel is the good news of love that Christ has brought in. 
"We intend to destroy the Slave Power and save you from it, 
and save the Union, too, from sin and shame. And lest John 
should rise and cut us off in the midst of our sins, we intend 
to place the sword safe under the segxs of the law, and never, 
while you are true to your citizenship, will it flash ruin 
through your borders. We shall hold it to prevent the Slave 
Power from dissolving the Union, or further assailing our 
liberties ; but the weapon with which we shall uproot des- 
potism, will be one of which it will know too little until it 
feels it in its bones and blood ; all penetrating as the air, 
irresistible as the light; the power of Christian freedom and. 
3 



26 AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 

love, illuminating your souls and changing your civilization 
from murky darkness to shining day." 

Against that vreapon of a Christianized public sentiment, 
inspiring men, shaping institutions, pouring in everywhere 
like the water and the air, the mightiest powers of earth must 
strive in vain. How small looked Jesus, hanging on the 
cross, to those who represented the authority and held the 
heavy sword of the Roman despotism ; and yet, how did his 
truth penetrate, like subtle fire, into every ojint of that 
mighty fabric of tyranny, slowly dissolving it into fragments 
and moulding the states of modern society. Just so is Jesus 
fighting for the truth in America. Herod can kill John, can 
kill you and me, and a thousand like us ; but can he kill the 
glorious spirit of freedom in millions of lofty souls ? Al- 
ready is the Slave Power alarmed and aroused by the en- 
croachments of that spirit, so intangible and yet so irresistible. 
It never yet understood how it lost Kansas. It seized the 
ballot box, subdued the friends of freedom, erected an usurped 
government over them, slew scores of men, burned, banished , 
held for a time all the approaches to the territory. It re- 
enforced its own power by the whole weight of the govern- 
ment of the United States, and yet, spite of all, it was beaten, 
and an empire glided from its grasp as by magic. It was the 
first great conflict in which the northern brain has been pitted 
against the bullet of the Slave Power. Our weapon was the 
best, and we thought Kansas out of their hands. 

There is sometimes represented on the stage a wonderful 
pantomime, in which a supernatural knight, bearing a magic 
sword, is commissioned to foil and destroy the great roue and 
bully of a kingdom. The bravo seeks out and defies his 
strange, silent foe and slays him in single combat. He sinks 
into the earth only to rise behind his back ; falls again only 
to spring up fresh and calm. Every where the ghost-knight 
haunts his burly enemy. Wherever the spectre appears, the 
powers of nature turn against the sinner. In his own kitchen 
the game and meats spring up alive j in the forest he is 



AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 27 

mocked by a flitting beauty who vanishes on being pursued, 
or when caught turns to the statue of one of his murdered 
enemies ; in the graveyard the effigies on the tombs wave 
their ghastly hands ; in his midnight orgies the marble forms 
of his victims enter and confront him. He shoots the mys- 
terious stranger, but the bullet is caught and tossed back to 
his feet; till worn out and maddened by the never-ending, 
still beginning contest with a supernatural power, he curses 
his God, and is carried off by demons to his reward. 

I sat one night at the play and saw this grotesque and 
awful pantomime ; and as I looked the stage expanded to a 
continent, and I beheld only the great conflict between free- 
dom and despotism. I saw the Slave Power, as in my youth, 
mob the abolitionists, and put a gag in the mouth of the 
Congressmen, and rob the mails, only to set every man 
talking, and make the national capitol a great debating so- 
ciety on Slavery, and the post-office the express of freedom. 
I saw it drive us into a Mexican war, and gain an imperial 
territory which turned to ashes in its hand, only giving it 
three slave votes in Congress, with a score of commonwealths 
in reserve for us. Then I beheld it enact the Fugitive Law, 
to catch a few runaways ; and lo ! the whole country was 
mined by the underground railroad, with its station on every 
plantation, and a nation of freemen growing up across the 
line. I saw it break the compact that might have given it 
half a dozen slave states, only to lose all it fought for, and 
create the organized emigration that will defeat it in every fu- 
future territory. I looked on as it half slew a Senator for one 
speech of two hours ; and behold ! the whole North swarmed 
with orators cursing it in countless tongues. I read its bul- 
letin of a Dred Scott decision, only to learn to interpret the 
Constitution for freedom, and arouse the people's judiciary 
of every free state. I saw it set up John Brown's gallows' 
which, much as I abhor the shedding of blood, I fear the 
North will never take down, but keep to hang every Slave 
Governor or Senator who draws a sword against the state. 



28 AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 

I see the shadow of that gallows already creeping towards 
more than one great man. I saw it open the slave trade, 
and organize its fiUibustering hordes, only to turn against 
itself the moral sentiment of the whole civihzed earth. So 
must it be. The Slave Power has gained a hundred victories 
since I was a child, and not one has given it any real increase 
of power ; the country is freer ; we are marching with a more 
resistless pace towards Liberty than ever before. 

No wonder the Slave Power is driven to insanity. Baffled 
as by spirits at every turn ; losing every conquest ; its oldest 
state invaded by free emigration ; its newest rising into a free 
republic, what can it do but fly to arms, and spend the money 
with which it ought to educate its people, to buy Sharp's 
rifles and revolvers at Hartford and Springfield, and cocked 
hats and gold lace in New York, to shoot — whom ? Does it 
want more of our blood? We have ten thousand men, 
women and children, who will go to the scaffold if need be, 
as cheerfully as martyrs ever went to the stake. What 
then? Can it hang our literature? Can it bayonet our 
school ? Can it manacle our busy hand ? Can it set a police 
over our growing corn, and wheat, and grass ? Can it shoot 
our immortal souls ? Can it fight duels with the eloquence 
that peals through a thousand churches ? Can it gibbet the 
prayers of four millions slaves that storm the throne of God, 
and day and night cry out : " How long, oh, Lord ! how 
long ? " Can it empty its rail cars and hotels of thoughts of 
freedom ? Lo ! they are burning in a million hearts within 
its own homes ; they are dividing its own soul in ttvain ! 

Vain is the struggle against inevitable Justice. The Slave 
Power is doomed. If the party of freedom is wise and 
strong as the emergency demands, no state will shoulder arms 
to march out of the Union, no raging armies will follow a 
Quixotic Virginia Governor to the siege of the Capital. Lib- 
erty will be triumphant by the voice of the people and enfold 
the Slave Power and all its fretful humors with a wall of im- 
placable justice and fraternal love, and set the intellect and 



AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 29 

the conscience of the Christian world to catechise and warn 
and illuminate and labor with it for half a century. And 
God's will must be done in the regeneration of the country 
and the triumph of man. 

Men and women of America ! that is the battle you are 
called to fight. For a few years more it is left for us to 
choose whether we will subdue Herod by the gospel of John 
or Jesus. Shall the good and right-minded now unite peace- 
ably to stop this guilty career of folly and crime, or shall we 
still go on, blundering and blind, till complication gets worse 
confounded, and God sends forth the spirit of war and ruin to 
scourge the land ? For the republic must be redeemed from 
this threatening despotism. Shall we now combine, and in wis- 
dom, moderation, love, save the whole ; or shall we contend and 
divide till half has fallen off to unite with barbarous Mexico 
for a great slave empire ; or state is hurled against state in 
the horrors of civil discord and servile anarchy ? Choose 
speedily whom you will have to do this work, for already the 
hours rush on to the consummation, and we may not long be 
left to any choice. Who shall it be ? Herod, brandishing 
the slave whip over a fallen empire j John risen from the 
dead, raging like a Nemesis from ocean to ocean ; or Jesus, 
rising upon the continent in a sunshine of order and justice, 
and liberty, and fraternal love ? 



Caylord Bros. 

Makers 
Syracuse, N. Y 

PAT. JAN. 21, 1908 




